In my perambulations around the site, I've read a post in which someone states that a writer doesn't reach the height of their powers until they are in their 60s. Is this generally accepted to be true?

I would think this depends on how long they've been writing, among other things?

And don't some writers start to lose it a bit, if they've written great stuff in their earlier years?

The possibility of always getting better is alluring, but seems too rigid an idea. People peak at different times, surely?

Would love to hear what people have to say on the matter.

Thanks.

Jan

I'm hoping that's true, Jan. I have a year to go!

Jem you are not 59!!! Are you - seriously?

Kat x

No idea (though I'm more convinced - which isn't very convinced at all - that most writers only have four or five really original books in them, before they start writing the same book over and over again.)

But if it is true, I wish someone would tell the book trade that. It gets steadily more difficult to get them interested as you get older. Not to mention the number of prizes which have an upper age limit.

Emma

if it is true, I wish someone would tell the book trade that. It gets steadily more difficult to get them interested as you get older. Not to mention the number of prizes which have an upper age limit.

Really? I thought writing was one of the few 'jobs' where age made no difference?

Jan

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That's really rather depressing.

Emma, do you mean it gets harder for a new writer to get established or for established writers, too, as they get older? You'd think this was one area where age and experience really counted for something!

Jan

No, I'm 95, Kat!

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I agree, Emma, that writers keep on writing the same book after a while. And also that to be a writer eligible for a prize you often have to be a "new" writer, which is generally equated with being young, though it's not always the case.

Is this generally accepted to be true?

Hand on heart, I can say it is at least as true as any or all of the following:
- White men can't jump
- There are no good trumpeters older than 35
- Women cannot park cars
- There is a god
- You have to have written a million words before your first publication
- There is not a god
- You have to write a shitty first draft to write a good second one
- People who write a shitty first draft are wasting their time as they should write it properly the first time
- Eating cheese before bedtime gives you nightmares
- You should only write what you know if you want to make it credible
- You should only write what you don't know if you want to make it interesting
- Children should be seen and not heard
- The way to a man's heart is through his stomach
- Persistence beats resistance
- Democracy is the best system of government
- He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day
- A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle

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PS: Should have added this from Roald Dahl
- Nobody can write anything worthwhile before the age of 35

And this...
- Your first novel will never be published


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And this...
- The publishing industry needs agents

Thanks, Gaius.

I'm really rather concerned by Emma's comment about older writers and their problems getting published, though.

Jan

most writers only have four or five really original books

Adding that one to the list also; most writers don't even have one. A huge number of very good writers don't write novels.
G

Well, being a) young and b) gorgeous does mean you're an easier sell to the media, which means you're an easier sell to bookshops, and therefore to sales/marketing and therefore to editors, and therefore to agents.

So does being uncompromisingly literary and edgy and male and gorgeous and young. (The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year shortlist a couple of years back was all male.) And if you're really ancient, then agents will be wondering if you're going to be around for the longer term that they have to think in terms of. Mary Wesley managed it at 75, but a) she had a wonderful and adoring editor and b) she been a thwarted writer for 25 years, and once she got a deal wrote two books a year for the next ten.

But so do lots of other things help: writing a highly saleable book is the most important thing, with writing a stonkingly good book coming up fast behind.

Having an interesting/weird life story or a famous parent does no harm, or at least something which can be polished up into a good story or parent (and it's surprising how interesting a dull life can be made, with some careful polishing.)

But the thing you have to realise is that writing the novels you want to write is most unlikely to be or become a long-term job, in terms of you earning most or all of your living by it.

The default (note, not the inevitability) is for your advances to go down, because 90% of first and second novels don't make any money: they sell less than or only just up to expectations, and so later advances reflect that fact. And that was before advances went down 30-50% across the board with the recession. So the default is that it gets increasingly difficult to sell your work, unless you do the magic thing called 'breaking out', on say your third or fourth book, which is when your books go beyond their natural constituency of readers and become widely sold. Other writers don't manage that, and have to start writing something else.

If you want the brutal truth of it all, told with redeeming humour, try Harry Bingham's Getting Published. It leaves no illusions unstoned, but it's stuff we all need to know.

I've no grouse with prizes for debut novels, I do have a grouse with prizes for young writers. Why? The young and unattached can perfectly well starve in a garret in time-honoured fashion. It's the older ones with children and commitments who are still brave enough to make the jump into writing seriously who need the help.

Emma

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Ooops - Mary Wesley was 70, not 75. Her biography, Wild Mary, by Patrick Marnham, is fab - what a life!

writing a highly saleable book is the most important thing, with writing a stonkingly good book coming up fast behind.

Glad to hear it! It's unlikely a publisher would turn down a great novel when they found the author was 'too old', I would think.

But the thing you have to realise is that writing the novels you want to write is most unlikely to be or become a long-term job, in terms of you earning most or all of your living by it.

I realise that most writers don't make a great deal of money. I suppose it depends how much you're happy or able to live on, assuming you can make anything at all.

I do have a grouse with prizes for young writers. Why? The young and unattached can perfectly well starve in a garret in time-honoured fashion. It's the older ones with children and commitments who are still brave enough to make the jump into writing seriously who need the help.

Broadly speaking, this is probably true, although I was working to pay a mortgage at 24 and have more time now, later in life, to write.

Thanks for clarifying, Emma. You had me really worried there for a while! I don't mind going unpublished if my stuff isn't up to scratch, but if I'm on a hiding to nothing simply because of my age - well, there's nothing I can do about that.

Jan

It's unlikely a publisher would turn down a great novel when they found the author was 'too old', I would think.

Yes, IF it's a really, really great novel. But if it's borderline, then the age of the writer does come into it, just as all sorts of other things do (how sexy the subject is, whether it's terribly short or terribly long, how marketable you are in ways other than age. And so on.)

I suppose it depends how much you're happy or able to live on, assuming you can make anything at all.

Well the average advance for a literary debut novel from a mainstream publisher is £5-25,000, and for niche literary fiction (small publisher, unusual book) is £0-3,0000.

But the vast majority of books are clustered at the lower end of those ranges: £25,000 is pretty rare.

And it's paid in three or four chunks. And two-book deals are getting harder to come by. And how fast can you turn 'em out. And so on.

Sorry, having a gloomy day today...

Emma

Yes, IF it's a really, really great novel. But if it's borderline, then the age of the writer does come into it, just as all sorts of other things do (how sexy the subject is, whether it's terribly short or terribly long, how marketable you are in ways other than age. And so on.)

I'm sure you're right, you're much more in the know than I am, but when an agent/publisher first reads your novel, they don't know how old you are, do they? Unless you include a CV, I suppose, or it's clear from your style or subject matter.

But, yes, I quite see that they would want someone who can keep coming up with the goods, although how you can be certain of this, I don't really know.

I suppose they're no longer happy to back the quality one-offs of the past - Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell come to mind - which is a great shame.

Jan

Well I don't suppose they knew that Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell would be one-offs, when they signed them. Nor indeed all the people who took ten years to produce their second novel (Donna Tartt springs to mind,) though of course there comes a point, as with Jonathan Franzen, when 'long-awaited' becomes a publicity point in itself. Not that authors do it for that reason - I think it's usually a bad case of second novel syndrome. On the other hand, some people do only have one good book in them.

But it was also possible to run things on much smaller sales, then. The bar is just set terribly high for how many copies is a viable number.

With age, no, they won't know how old you are when you submit. But they will by the time they're considering taking you on. And I bet experience tells them something, when it comes to voice and subject, or even just name and address...

Emma